Nevermind the Beach Boys… Surfing, Film & Music

Natures Big Wave funnel explained:
Oceanogragraphers will delight in explaning that the 90 foot wave is due not only to the favourable weather conditions but, beneath the ocean and bigger than the Grand Canyon, is the Nazaré Canyon, which has a depth of 5,000 metres and is about 230 kilometres long. A big wave funnel… make sense?

Birth of big Wave Surfing at Newquay’s Cribbar circa 1966. Vintage surfer Roger Mansfield reflects on the day Britain’s cold slice of the Hawaiian dream became a reality. Wetsuits hand’t been invented. All you needed was a pair of shorts and rather large Niagras’ (Niagra-falls).The Endless Winter Episode 1 – The Cribbar is the first installment of a retrospective journey around Britain’s rich surfing heritage. Will keep you posted!

Two things not to mention on a first date are Surfing and the Weather. I hid my interests in both for along time until I had two kids and a joint-mortgage to buffer the blow. Sadly, during a sleepless night, I sneaked downstairs, switched on the computer, let myself go and began watching live, free “explosive” entertainment. Imagine my partners surprise when she caught me: “Christ you sicko! What is THIS you’re watching. YOU‘RE WATCHING… the weather?
“Yes” I said, and quoted the BBC, “they have predicted the UK will have ‘a brush with explosive weather‘”.

The best part of this video, Surfing a 90 foot wave, are the comments that follow:‘you want blood pain fear; get a real job or get married, you freak, and meet the friggen in-laws’

It is an amazing achievement for surfer Garrett McNamara, beating his own personal record (what?) by riding a 90ft wave off the coast of Portugal! Anything over four foot and I start thinking about life insurance ads. However, as noted in the comments, he starts off on the wave with his left foot forward (natural) and finishes with his right foot forward (goofy). Hang on! Nobody, not even Roy Castle with his Zen like mastery of the bugle for summoning-up the force or what he rightly called “dedication” and covering himself with Old Spice could switch from natural to goofy foot, by unstrapping his feet while hurtling down a 90 foot wave.

When I read this today it brought back “the horror”
Fourteen years of testing a relationship in the wind and rain takes some explaining. A marital problem that combines travel, remorse, guilt and flowers; brought on by a broken vision to combine a family holiday with a surf at dawn. It is an obsession fuelled by the kind of midlife crisis that has not easily manifested itself. Instead of a fixed-gear bicycle (acceptable), triathlon-pants (borderline) or a car that can accelerate faster than you can think (’80s); I decided to involve the whole family and hear (and ignore): “Why do we always have to go to Cornwall?”

When I ‘first’ turned 40 I swapped my custom-made surfboard with my friend’s 13 year old daughter. I swapped it for her surfboard. Her dad’s old board, a Rusty ‘quad’. I tried it once and like H.G.Wells Time Machine, stepped on the foam and transported back to June 1989. A hollow summer swell. During that time I should have been revising but instead, with a friend from Cornwall, I nearly got barreled!

The nearly, is the unfinished business at the midlife heart of my crisis. This half term, I tested the family’s resolve in a similar fashion to rubbing wax on a surfboard.

Kids in the new car. Sun roof down. Stereo making everyone happy… The weather WAS glorious. Everything WAS amazing until the car hit 70mph. The whistle, the HORROR of the whistle from somewhere around the car, went from not being there to drowning out the stereo. I felt physically sick. My partner realised that the sound (which I declared was the wheel bearings) came from the surfboard. There was no turning back – I had f**ked-up another holiday before we’d even had time to moan about the excessive rain.

And yes the rain did come. This was a Cornish holiday. And I did surf half an hour before dawn joined by Simon, another dad-in-a-crisis. “This is the life” he rightly said. Our breath froze and we shivered even before we had reached the beach. Watergate Bay showed no mercy.

Endless walls of white water. We made it out the back. “Makes you feel alive!” said Simon… Point Break meets pointblank reality. I could only nod, my arms had turned into spaghetti! But the dream, which for 6 hours sounded like a whistle, lived on. When the sun eventually rose over the cliff, we got changed and watch the surf change from charging walls of foam into a classic Endless Summer-esque dream.